گارینه کشیشیان سیرکی

Southwest Asia has played a central role in the geopolitics of the global system since the Cold War years. All characteristics of a geopolitical region can be observed in Southwest Asia. In this geographical area, signs of challenge, crisis, conflict, and competition for power expansion among regional actors and significant powers are expanding. The security environment of Southwest Asia is linked with many indicators of "geopolitics of crisis" and "geopolitics of chaos." Given these conditions, as well as the political and social challenges and the geopoliti-cal conflicts and security concerns in the region, the actions of actors—especially the emer-gence of centrifugal actors in Southwest Asia—will also change. Accordingly, it is predictable that the states of Southwest Asia can achieve their goals under conditions of stability and se-curity. As a result, the national goals and interests of the Islamic Republic of Iran can also be better secured under such conditions. In other words, the agent's actions in this region influ-ence the security environment of this area. The aim of this study is to explain the actions of the agents and examine the impact of their actions on the processes of the security environ-ment. The study's findings show that one of Iran's security priorities in Southwest Asia is to prevent the increase of influence by regional and extra-regional powers in this area and reduce it. In this regard, Iran seeks to tie its interests to the region by creating economic and cultural relations that ensure mutual and multilateral benefits through appropriate and reasonable se-curity policy.

In recent decades, the concept of sustainable regional development has become one of the funda-mental axes of policymaking at regional levels in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In this regard, with the design and implementation of five-year medium-term plans such as the Fourth Development Plan, greater coherence and alignment between policies and executive actions emerged, and the de-cision-making system became more systematic. This research, using library tools for data collection and descriptive-analytical methods and qualitative content analysis, as well as utilizing the theory of social and spatial justice, sought to answer the question: What position has sustainable regional development policymaking had in the Fourth Economic, Social and Cultural Development Plan of the Islamic Republic of Iran? The results indicate that although the Fourth Development Plan, in terms of formulating laws and designing policies, has a progressive, comprehensive, and innovative approach and has attempted to integrate various dimensions of regional development indicators into a coherent and justice-oriented framework with a holistic and integrated view, it has encountered a serious gap between goals and field realities in the implementation and practice stage. Weak institu-tional coordination, lack of executive guarantees, and the dominance of political views over plan-ning logic have led to the achievement of goals being pursued in an unstable and unbalanced man-ner. Excessive reliance on unstable financial resources and inability to build effective institutions have hindered the operationalization of key concepts such as land planning and spatial justice. As a result, instead of realizing an integrated development model, this plan has become a manifestation of the disconnect between ideal planning and inefficient implementation.

Since the beginning of human settlement, the most important factor in facing various natural and un-natural disasters and facilitating development in a society has been solidarity and unity. However, this can only be achieved through the performance of rulers and the formation of governments. As different societies have formed and various cultures have emerged, and as humanity has progressed toward evolution and excellence, the model of this consensus has also undergone changes. With the establishment of governments, based on the decisions of societies in their modern form, multiple fac-tors have played fundamental roles in shaping this unity, while progressive human thought undoubt-edly influencing this process. However, what prompts further reflection on this issue is how this co-hesion emerges when needed and how its fragmentation being prevented under a governance struc-ture. It is evident that a national governance structure plays a significant role in shaping different pol-icy approaches. Due to the influence of various ideas on the formation of governments and the relent-less efforts of scholars and thinkers to develop a suitable and superior governance model, the concept of "good governance" has gained attention in recent decades. Good governance, when properly aligned with a structure that suits a society’s prevailing conditions, can play a crucial role and evolve over time. Principles such as participation, accountability, transparency, the rule of law, etc., are among the fundamental aspects of governance. Each of these principles can be extensively analyzed, but in this discussion, the focus is on the formation of public consensus or, more appropriately, "so-cial convergence" within a desirable "governance structure." Undoubtedly, this structure plays a key role as a fundamental prerequisite for comprehensive and effective implementation of governance thought in fostering social convergence across various sectors of society and government.

The Middle East and North Africa constitute one of the strategic and most significant regions in the world with a turbulent history. The region witnessed the birth of various countries and tense developments from the second decade of the 20th century until the middle of the century, and most of the countries in the region, including Arabic countries and Israel, emerged during the period. In this regard, the countries in the region have experienced conflicts, wars, invasions, and, sometimes, peace, in their relations with Israel. The latest development in this respect is the Saudi-led normalization of ties between some Arabic countries and Israel to oppose Iran and its axis of resistance. Though this has posed a number of threats to Iran’s national security, some opportunities are evident in it, as well. Thus, the main question of the present study is what opportunities the normalization of ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel can have for the empowerment of the axis of resistance. The study utilizes a descriptive and analytical methodology to answer the question, and the overall result of the study – i.e., the tested hypothesis – shows that opportunities like the creation of chasms between the government and society in Saudi Arabia, the pressure felt by Fatah and the need to reconcile with Hamas, Muslims’ reaction to the negation of the Palestinian Dream by Saudis, the creation of chasms between the government and society of Israel, and the gradual withdrawal of the U.S. from the region are all factors that can boost the axis of resistance based on the existence of groups who oppose the process of normalization across Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Islamic world at large.

Public policy-making is a six-stage cycle, and the implementation of policies is one of the most sensitive stages of its formulation, failure in this stage leads to the failure of the entire policy-making process. Also, policy-making includes an interactive process between setting goals and necessary actions to realize them, which may be disrupted by many challenges, obstacles, and limitations. In this research, the goal was Pathology of implementation of rural development policies in the fourth and fifth development plans. This research is applied in terms of its purpose and descriptive and survey based on the nature of the data. The results of the research are presented in two qualitative and quantitative sections. In the main and qualitative part of the research, using the Delphi technique, we investigated the damage of rural development in the fourth and fifth programs. At first, using the opinions of experts, the gap between the existing state of rural development and the ideal state was determined, and based on the opinions of experts and the T-Tech test, it was determined that there is a fundamental difference between the current state and the ideal state. and in the current situation in the indicators of employment status, housing, medical and treatment facilities, digital infrastructure, transportation and communication route, industrial agriculture, welfare and recreation, cultural-educational, tourism and underground water the average quality was low. Therefore, the necessity of carrying out the pathology of the implementation of rural development policies became clearer. Then, based on the theoretical background of the research, as well as interviewing and completing the questionnaire by specialists and research elites, the indicators of developmental pathology were compiled, and finally, the final model of the questionnaire was compiled, and the quantitative results of the questionnaire were extracted based on the answers of the participants in the research. In the quantitative analysis and chi square test results, it was shown that the role of policy indicators, juridical and legal obstacles, political, social and economic factors, motivations and attitudes of executives, administrative system and bureaucracy, are insufficient and inappropriate. The lack of tools is significant in the absence of rural development.

Justice has long been a topic of interest and concern in human societies and among scholars. Justice can be considered the ultimate goal of government formation and has always been a fundamental necessity for the collective life of humans throughout history. Distributive justice, the focus of this study, oversees the government's responsibilities towards the people and determines the distribution of occupations, positions, and public wealth. The importance of distributive justice lies in achieving the acceptance of the ruling system and the satisfaction of citizens, leading to stability and the de-velopment of society in various dimensions of collective life, ultimately resulting in national pros-perity. This research aims to analytically and comparatively examine the perspectives of Western and Islamic scholars on distributive justice. The research method is of a library nature. The research findings indicate that distributive justice in the writings of various Western philosophers and think-ers can be found in one of the following four forms: distribution based on merit, distribution based on fairness, distribution based on need, and distribution based on the principle of equality. From the perspective of Islamic scholars, distributive justice emphasizes universal equality of humans, main-taining proportionality in everything, rejecting any form of discrimination, respecting all entitle-ments, equality in benefiting from Bait al-Mal, and belief in the equality of humans before the law.

Popper, by proposing the theory of falsifiability as a prerequisite for the scientific nature of theories and hypotheses and by rejecting inductive method as the conventional scientific methodology up to that time, presented a new criterion for distinguishing science from pseudo-science, which sparked much agreement and disagreement. Inspired by the Socratic dialectical method, he affirmed the un-certainty and conjectural nature of theories and beliefs, and by equating reason with criticism, he considered the only method of approaching truth to be through continuous dialogue while observing the principles of liberty, tolerance, and fallibility in a free environment guaranteed by the democrat-ic state he envisioned. The democracy Popper had in mind, contrary to the prevailing interpretation, did not mean rule by the people or rule by the majority but rather stemmed from critical rationality and its foundations such as falsifiability and fallibility, which had a negative rather than a positive character. Popper, through a negative interpretation of how democracy functioned in ancient Greece, particularly during the Periclean era, first regarded the age-old question of “Who should rule?” as fundamentally mistaken and defined the correct interpretation of democracy as the ability to remove or dismiss an undesirable government without bloodshed. He redefined the punishment of exile in ancient Greece as a method of preventing tyranny and despotism stemming from popular-ity, thereby presenting evidence of the negative and deterrent aspect of democracy. In this study, the researcher, based on a descriptive-analytical method, attempts to show the close relationship be-tween the theory of critical rationality and Popper’s theory of democracy based on the main ques-tion and hypothesis.

The idea of populism or Narodniki in Russia has received less attention in Iran because it has been placed in the shadow of Russian communist leftist ideas. Conceptually, this idea is far beyond populism and Russian communism, and has had wide-ranging effects both in Russia and outside of this country. How this thought has been able to be so in-fluential is the main issue in this article that the authors have tried to analyze with the aim of investigating its roots, dimensions and consequences. In fact, the main question is how populist thought appeared in Russia and why did it become an effective and wide-spread trend? The hypothesis of this article is that the idea of populism emerged as a reaction to the neglect of the role of the people in the political life of Russia in the sec-ond half of the 19th century, and because of its acceptance by intellectuals and based on a combination of three British constitutional and democratic views. French socialism and Russian nativism were spread. To investigate this hypothesis, we have used the ana-lytical-descriptive method of political thoughts from the perspective of Thomas Spra-gens and in a qualitative format. The finding of this article is that social issues have aris-en and the intellectual responses of thinkers, despite their own timeliness, have been re-produced in a way for centuries and are still useful and very important for understanding the social and political conditions of the periods after that.

Iran, one of the powerful players in West Asia, from the beginning of the crisis in Syria, al-ways tried to sensitively take a completely different position from other regional players in supporting the political system of Syria, as one of the important priorities in foreign policy, follow his military and security. Iran's positions in the Syrian crisis were based on the overlap of the national security interests of this country and the Syrian nation-state, because the vic-tory of fundamentalist Salafist groups in Syria could be the biggest security threat to the axis of resistance, Iran's national interests, and Shia geopolitics in the long run. The region should include Shamat and Iraq. These conditions also existed for Russia, which envisions its own interests in the region of West Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean. Due to its energy re-sources and geopolitical location, this region is considered an influential and unforgivable area for actors like Russia. By presenting ISIS as a security concern, Tehran and Moscow succeed-ed in limiting the American effort to have a serious presence in Syria through close coopera-tion in addition to eliminating the threat of ISIS. In this article, an attempt was made to an-swer this question by relying on the theory of realism, how the crisis in Syria has affected the relations between Iran and Russia between 2010 and 2017 by emphasizing military-security cooperation.

The primary issue of this research was to investigate the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and user behavior patterns on social networks, the impact of AI on voting behavior, and the connection between the use of online data analysis and students' decision-making in presidential elections. This question arises while considering the influence of AI on user behavior patterns and decision-making in presidential elections. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of AI variables and online data on user behavior and decision-making in various contexts. This re-search examined the study hypothesis to better understand how behavior and decision-making are shaped in the digital age and the role of modern technologies in these processes. To conduct this research, a survey method and available library resources were utilized. The study used existing sources and collected necessary data from the target population, namely students at universities in Tehran, and employed descriptive and inferential statistics for data analysis. The findings of this research indicate that demographic variables and AI play a significant role in user behavior and de-cision-making, and the use of online data analysis can influence students' decision-making in presi-dential elections. Additionally, AI can be effective in detecting user behavior patterns on social networks and influencing voting behavior. These results can be useful for policymakers, election officials, and social activists in designing effective strategies to monitor user behavior and decision-making in the digital age, contributing to a better understanding of AI's role in shaping behavior and decision-making in society.

The Syrian civil war, which has been labeled as one of the most significant crises in the Middle East, has turned this region into a scene of cooperation and competition among regional and trans-regional powers. The geographical scope of the conflict, the occurrence of extremely severe violence, and the direct and indirect involvement of international actors in operational battlefields have made this crisis one of the unique examples in the last decade. The nature of international phenomena has shown that regional and major powers, in a multilateral framework, are seeking to stabilize the balance of power in the international environment alongside cooperation and competition. The crisis in Syria has shown signs of such relations between Russia and Iran since 2010. Now, the question that arises here, which this article aims to examine and find an answer to within the framework of realism theory, is: "What impact has the Syrian crisis had on increasing political cooperation between Iran and Russia during the years 2010-2017?" Based on this question, the proposed hypothesis is that "the relatively common perspective of Iran and Russia on regional and international developments, although with sometimes differing foundational goals, provided the groundwork for joint cooperation between the two countries in various dimensions, particularly in the political sphere, within the framework of supporting the established government in Syria."

The fair distribution of facilities and the correct implementation of distributive justice in multi-ethnic so-cieties increases unity among different ethnicities and increases people's trust in the political system, and as a result, reduces inequalities and eliminates social gaps. The purpose of this research is to investigate the attitude of the Turkmen people towards distributive justice in Golestan province. The research meth-od is a survey, and information has been collected using a questionnaire. The statistical population of this research is all Turkmen people with at least diploma education, living in Golestan province. System-atic random sampling method and sample size based on Cochran's formula is 207 people. Statistical analysis was done using PLS software. The model extracted from examining the relationship between satisfaction with governance and the components of distributive justice showed that the path coeffi-cients between distributive justice in the political (0.371), economic (0.253) and cultural (0.154) dimen-sions show a positive and significant relationship with satisfaction with governance. However, no signifi-cant relationship was observed between social justice and satisfaction with governance despite the exist-ence of a positive relationship (0.110); Therefore, the results obtained from the research show that there is a significant relationship between distributive justice and satisfaction with governance, and Turkmen people believe that justice is not equally distributed among different ethnic groups in the society, which requires special attention in development planning.